Tag Archives: Cincinnati Common

Congratulations to Jeff and Andy for winning the club Cincinnati Common competition judged by Jeff and Ryan from MadTree. Jeff and Andy’s recipe will soon be brewed by MadTree on their system and served at the tap room as well as around the city!!

If you missed out on this opportunity but still want to brew your own Cincy Common then stop by Osborn Brewing and pick up a kit. Here’s what Brent Osborn & Ryan Tarpley have to say about the style:

In case you’re wondering the Cincinnati Common has roots in the Ohio Valley and is based on the Kentucky Common that Randy Mosher talks about in his book, Radical Brewing, (available for sale here at the store). When we did some research on the style we found some interesting points:

1) This was a beer brewed up and down the Ohio River Valley, especially around Lexington, Louisville and Cincinnati with a bulk of the mash from leftover grains the distilleries used for whisky or bourbon. These sour grains produced a sour/tart character in most of the beers.

2) A pub owner, close to where the Ivory soap plant is, wrote in his memoirs that pre prohibition his sales were ~85% common and 15% American Lager. When I read that I told Ryan we had to get this recipe on our shelves.

We wanted to make this recipe as authentic as possible, but we also wanted it to be easy to brew. For that reason we left the sour mash up to the brewer. I did not want to include bacteria or possible brewery contaminants in a kit because so much of early brewing is focused on sanitation and keeping those bacteria out of the home brewery. We also figured, that because of the lack of distilleries in the Cincinnati area, that the brewpubs at the time were serving a version of the Kentucky Common that was not from a sour mash. For that reason we named our version Cincinnati Common.